Group Projects
by WeBuiltThePyramids
Summary: Set during Tick Tick Tick.  Barney was always the one who didn't pull his weight when involved with something that involved multiple people to accomplish.  But this time, she's the one that doesn't come through.


**So…I haven't written too much HIMYM fic, and not anything in several months, but I just had to, had to after these past few episodes, write something. This takes place during Tick Tick Tick.**

**DISCLAIMER: I am not in any way affiliated with How I Met Your Mother. I just play around with the characters because sometimes they call to me.**

Barney used to love working in pairs, or working in larger groups. At school, he could slack off while the others, their grades dependent on the work being completed, picked up his extra weight and pulled it off. It was easy because he never had to do anything and the final project always made him look good.

The he grew older, and he continued to love working in pairs – whether the pair was him and a woman or just boobs in general, he loved it. And as he was high up on the totem pole at work, if he didn't feel like doing his share of (please) he could pass it on to someone else, and their job at risk, the lower employee would do it for him. And once again, the job got done, and Barney looked good.

Marshall had yelled at him once, telling him that he had to stop letting others pick up the slack, that one day Barney would need to get something done that _he_ specifically needed to do, and if he or anyone else working on the project didn't come through, the whole thing would fall apart. He didn't remember exactly what he'd said, but it was probably something along the lines of a scoff and "please."

And Marshall was wrong. Because that night in November of 2011, it was Barney who was let down.

He and Robin had a deal. Each of them would confess to their significant others that they had cheated. They would answer any questions that Nora and Kevin asked honestly, and then…and then they would meet at MacLaren's to talk about them.

_Us._

Barney had come through, despite the untimely arrival of Nora's parents. And Nora, sweet Nora, had been willing to give him another chance, acting much more forgiving now that they were a couple than she had been when Barney had to all but give up an arm for a chance with her. And he knew now that he had done that because he had thought, deep down, that any actual relationship would give him the feelings that he had for Robin Scherbatsky. He also knew, now, that it wasn't the relationship that gave him the feelings; it was the specific girl. Dating, and sex, neither made the love be there. It had to come out of the two people who were meant to be with each other.

His hookup with Robin meant more to him, even after being broken up for two years, than his entire time with Nora, through no fault of his current girlfriend's own.

So he answered her honestly. He admitted that he couldn't say to Nora that the hookup had meant nothing. It'd have been the biggest lie he would have ever told, and as hard as it was, as a boyfriend, to admit that to his significant…to his girlfriend, with her parents in the next room, he knew it was what he had to do.

And it never occurred to him, the man who had never pulled his weight, the man who had passed on such weight to others, that the woman he loved wouldn't pull her own.

And this time, he couldn't pick up the slack. No one could. He couldn't tell Kevin that they'd cheated (or at least, he wouldn't) and he couldn't remove the therapist from their social group and take Robin back to the room he had decorated, so sure – beyond a shadow of doubt that he'd be looking for from now on – that she too would do her part. This was something that Robin herself had to do, and she had failed.

Marshall was right about one thing. The whole thing had fallen apart. And as Barney walked back to Ted and Robin's apartment to clean up her room, he wondered how it was possible to feel this much.

And he _almost_ wished it had been him that hadn't gone through with it. Because he was used to doing that.

Because now he was the one that was left with nothing.

He was the one that was broken.

**Hope you liked it! :) I believe this is my 100th fanfic! :D**


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